Tony Judt has written a compelling little book, his final one. The title comes from Oliver Goldsmith: “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey; where wealth accumulates, and men decay“. It is a beautiful and poignant title for a beautiful and poignant book. A short read, it is basically the length of a long essay and is written with a sense of passion and urgency. As well it should be, for it is Judt’s swan song. Judt died recently from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Ill Fares the Land
September 1, 2010
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Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | 
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Private Good, Public Bad
August 31, 2010Getting back to basics: we live in a community, a holistic community. We are not mere individuals. We come together in society to undertake collective actions that further the common good. Most of the time, this coordination comes in the private or subsidiary domain, but in the many instances where the market is not synonymous with justice, the state also has a role to play. Either way, the aims are the same, and both are subject to the moral law. But in America today we see signs of radical dichotomy between morality in the private and public sector. I’ve seen the argument numerous times – private companies are in business to make profits and reward shareholders, so they can do as they like, but anything that uses taxpayer money must conform to exacting moral standards (this is a slight exaggeration, but only slight).
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Tea Party Billionaires
August 30, 2010The right is always better organized than the left. There always seems to be the shady moneybags, standing anonymously behind the astute political director who guides the outrage and feeds the talking points to the mob with impressively coordinated precision. This is no more democracy than the “blue” and “green” riots in Roman days constituted democracy. It is carefully directed, carefully orchestrated, and usually serves the interests of the ruling class.
32 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Quote of the Day – Liberalism and Social Democracy are Different
August 30, 2010“American readers may be struck by the frequent references to social democracy. Here in the United States, such references are uncommon. When journalists and commentators advocate public expenditure on social objectives, they are more likely to describe themselves – and be described by their critics – as ‘liberals’. But this is confusing…A liberal is someone who opposes interference in the affairs of others: who is tolerant of dissenting attitudes and unconventional behavior. Liberals have historically favored keeping other people out of our lives, leaving individuals the maximum space in which to live and flourish as they choose. In their extreme form, such attitudes as associated today with self-styled ‘libertarians’, but the term is largely redundant. Most genuine liberals remain disposed to leave other people alone. Social democrats, on the other hand, are something of a hybrid. They share with liberals a commitment to cultural and religious tolerance. But in public policy social democrats believe in the possibility and virtue of collective action for the collective good.”
- Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, 2010.
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Preferential Option for the Super Rich
August 26, 2010If this country had a functioning media, they would never let Republicans away with screaming against government debt out of one side of their mouths, and calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the rich out of the other. But we do not have a functioning media and they do get away with it. Remember, the Obama administration has agreed to extend the cuts to all but the top income groups. Extending it further turns out to be incredibly expensive and incredibly unfair.
It would cost $680 billion dollars over 10 year. This is far greater than the cost of extending unemployment benefits to those out of work, something the Republicans opposed vigorously (the unemployed do not fill their coffers). It gets worse. Nearly all of the benefit goes to the richest 1 percent, those making more than $500,000 a year. Even more than this, 55 percent of the benefit goes to a mere 120,000 people – the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all taxpayers. Doing the math, that comes to an average $3 million tax reduction to those lucky enough to sit at the helm of the income distribution. It is indeed the preferential option for the super rich. This would be troublesome at the best of times, but in the current economic climate when so many struggle to get by, it’s simply immoral.
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The Third Bush Term?
August 12, 2010On the domestic front, I’ve been pretty happy with the Obama administration. It’s impressive that they have accomplished so much good in the face of unwielding nihilistic opposition. They passed the stimulus bill – could have been bigger, could have been better targeted, but they passed it, and used public demand to stop a downward spiral in private demand (see the Blinder-Zandi study noting that without the combined monetary, fiscal, and financial sector interventions, there would be 8.5 million fewer jobs, and GDP would be a whopping 6.5 percent lower). They passed a momentous health care reform bill, which will expand coverage to 32 million more people, end the scandal of widespread rationing by cost, and curb the growth of future health care spending. And they passed the most sweeping set of Wall Street regulations in generations – not perfect, and watered down by dealings with swing Republicans, but significant. Sadly, no action is forthcoming on the all important climate bill, but still, not a bad innings ove rthe past two years. It has certainly lived up to expectations.
But on the foreign front, I’ve been grievously disappointed.
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To show how much the Republican party has degenerated in so short a time…
August 9, 2010..I quote George W. Bush with approval:
“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect.”
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Schwarzenegger Backs Big Business Over Farm Workers
August 6, 2010The struggle for justice among farm workers is a long and poignant one. Cesar Chavez, the founder of United Farm workers, is now held up as an exemplary Catholic in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. And today, the struggle for justice and dignity of the (mostly immigrant) farm workers – who spend day after day doing backbreaking labor for paltry pay, exposed to hazardous pesticides, and living in company-owned labor camps - continues. But sadly, they have no ally in the governor of California. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have made farm workers eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than eight hours a day, and given them the right to a single day off a week. Not much to ask for, but still too much for Schwarzenegger. He ignored the pleas of priests and labor groups, claiming he didn’t want to put the growers at a competitive disadvantage.
This is a central moral issue. The Church has been talking about this ever since Rerum Novarum, and Gaudium Et Spes listed “disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit” as one of the greatest evils. It’s time to call out Schwarzenegger, and others like him, for a gross violation of Catholic social teaching.
(Hat tip – Faith in Public Life).
4 Comments | Catholic Social Teaching, Economics, Economy, Human Rights, Labor, Morning's Minion, Work | Permalink
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Quick Thought On Gay Marriage
August 5, 2010Gay marriage is inevitable. It became inevitable when legitimate achievements in reducing discrimination against gay people ran headlong into an altered definition of marriage that came to prominence in the 1960s and 1070s. Instead of being seen as a social institution geared toward the bearing and rearing of children, it emphasized the fulfilment of individual desires. Instead of a sacrament of mutual self-giving, it became a civil institution for the pursuit of mutual happiness. When looked at this way, there is no reason why gays should be denied entry into this institution, any more than they should be barred from certain kinds of employment. So if you want to blame anybody for this state of affairs, don’t blame homosexuals. Blame the heterosexuals who have chipped away at the institution of marriage over the years. Blame people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.
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It’s the Individual Mandate, Stupid
August 4, 2010It has always been clear to me that the most loathed part of healthcare reform for the right was the individual mandate. For too many, abortion was a smokescreen to gloss over the real objection, an objection with no real grounding in Catholic teaching. And when you see challenges to health care reform, they nearly always zero in on the individual mandate. This is the issue close to the heart of the particularly repulsive attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, who said the issue was “more about liberty than it is about health care”. And Missouri put a specific measure on the ballot targeting the individual mandate, which passed (although, as Michael Sean Winters notes, it passed with only 10 percent of the population).
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More on Inequality
August 2, 2010From Ed Luce of the Financial Times:
“Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the multiple is above 300.
The trend has only been getting stronger. Most economists see the Great Stagnation as a structural problem – meaning it is immune to the business cycle. In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.
Combine those two deep-seated trends with a third – steeply rising inequality – and you get the slow-burning crisis of American capitalism. It is one thing to suffer grinding income stagnation. It is another to realise that you have a diminishing likelihood of escaping it – particularly when the fortunate few living across the proverbial tracks seem more pampered each time you catch a glimpse. “Who killed the American Dream?” say the banners at leftwing protest marches. “Take America back,” shout the rightwing Tea Party demonstrators.”
The more I think about it, the more I believe that rising inequality – ignored by pretty much every pundit until relatively recently – explains much of what is going on in America.
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Inequality and the Bush Tax Cuts
July 30, 2010Martin Wolf of the Financial Times draws attention to a key finding by Raghuram Rajan: “of every dollar of real income growth that was generated between 1976 and 2007, 58 cents went to the top 1 per cent of households…This is surely stunning.” It is indeed stunning. The story of the last 30 years is basically that the rich did spectacularly well, the middle class stagnated, and the poor faced greater dislocation. I think we can all agree that this does not accord with Catholic social teaching.
This should clearly be the nail in the coffin of the supply-side nonsense (that, plus the fact that supply side reforms did not unleash any higher productivity as promised). Keep this in mind when considering the debate over whether the Bush tax cuts should expire or not. See the chart for who would gain:
Do we really want the super-rich to keep getting more and more?
23 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Let’s Not Bother With Global Warming
July 27, 2010On the back of the warmest six months on record, and as it becomes more and more evident that climate change is reaching some kind of tipping point, the media remain embroiled in manufactured controversies and American policymakers either stick their heads in the sand or brazenly defend their God-given right to pollute. Paul Krugman thinks the problem is greed and cowardice. He’s right, but it makes sense to delve a little deeper. So here it is, the seven American heterodoxies that stymie attempts to overcome the effects of climate change.:
(1) Gnosticism: Creation is evil, so why save it?
(2) Calvinism: Material success of a sign of virtue and divine favor, America is an exceptional country, and its citizens have the right to use natural resources as they see fit.
(3) Liberalism: The free market embodies efficiency and virtue – any interference diminishes freedom.
(4) Anti-intellectualism: Climate change – a “lib-uh-ral” conspiracy!
(5) Modernism: Man must become the master of nature and always better himself (for the latest version of this, see Ross Douthat: “a warmer world will also be a richer world”).
(6) Individualism: I have the right to my SUV, regardless of what is going on in Africa, and regardless of future generations.
(7) Nationalism: Why should America pay?
Of course, these ideologies are not necessarily consistent with each other, but they do spring from the same root – the nominalist revolution. Thanks a lot, William of Occam!
36 Comments | Climate Change, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Lowry and Ponnuru are Exceptionally Wrong
July 21, 2010A few months ago, Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru penned a long essay on American exceptionalism, and what they regard as Obama’s assault on it. Although I disagree with practically everything in it, is has the virtue of explaining the core tenets of what the modern American right dubs “conservatism”. My own belief is that this philosophy is fallacious – partly because it misinterprets conservatism, but mainly because it is totally divorced from Catholic sensibility and the Catholic worldview.
Their hypothesis is stated clearly upfront:
“What do we, as American conservatives, want to conserve? The answer is simple: the pillars of American exceptionalism. Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth. These qualities are the bequest of our Founding and of our cultural heritage. They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.”
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More on Real Life Abortion Funding
July 16, 2010In my last post, I pointed to the very weak pro-life protections built into the Republican Medicare Advantage program, which was supported by the National Right to Life Committee. I showed that at least some participants in this program are advertizing the fact that they are going beyond the restrictions of traditional Medicare and offering elective abortion.
But a broader point can be made. As my friend Kurt notes in the comments, a key issue is that the pro-life movement is holding the Democratic healthcare reform law to a far higher standard than any previous legislation – of either party – when it comes to the proximity of federal funds to abortion.
Let me give a couple of examples on top of Medicare Advantage. Remember the community health centers, which the pro-life movement likened (with zero evidence) to abortion factories? Well, the stimulus bill gave $2 billion to the community health centers, and nobody raised abortion. The stimulus bill also provided a 65 percent subsidy for COBRA premiums of unemployed workers. COBRA, of course, allows laid off workers to retain their employer-based insurance for a certain period, but the costs are often prohibitive. Yet again, this is a federal subsidy of private insurance plans could very well offer elective abortion. Not only was there no outrage, but the USCCB fully supported the extension of COBRA – even writing a letter saying it preferred 12 months to 9 months.
I’m not saying any of this was wrong. But it certainly means the goalposts have shifted. And they shifted because the National Right to Life Committee has always opposed universal healthcare. And to whip up support, they need to rely on phony outrage. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the great tragedy is that the USCCB followed their lead, and in doing so, contradicted some of its previous positions.
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An Real-Life Example of Abortion Funding
July 15, 2010To follow on my from my last post and MZ’s more recent one, the energy of the Catholic blogosphere is highly concentrated on whether a Pennsylvania high-risk pool that receives subsidies will pay for abortion. Of course, it will not. The law is clear and the statements of the authorities are clear. And yet, private insurance plans that receive federal subsidies in other contexts are paying for abortions, but this does unnoticed. I’ve talked about this before, and this is what I am talking about.
It’s from the Medicare Advantage program, whereby the federal government subsidizes private insurers to participate in Medicare (instead of paying directly, this channels funds to third-parties – private insurers – and it also tends to be more expensive than traditional Medicare). Here is what this policy says on abortion:
Voluntary abortion procedures are not covered under Original Medicare except for the following conditions:
- If the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest
- In the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, which would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed.
Coverage for voluntary abortion is provided to members under select Medicare Advantage private fee-for-service plans regardless of the circumstances that led to the pregnancy or the conditions related to the abortion.
There you have it, in black and white. Of course, the National Right to Life Committee not only doesn’t seem to care about this, but it actively supported the Medicare Advantage legislation in the first place, and approved the weakest possible pro-life protection (basically, that an insurer could not be discriminated against for refusing to offer abortion coverage).
And so you have people seeing abortion where it does not exist, and ignoring it under their noses (not only in this rather specific case, but more generally in the widespread funding of abortion from private insurance premiums). What gets lost in the debate is the whole purpose of high-risk pools – to allow people with pre-existing conditions to get coverage until the law kicks in. But when pro-market runs into pro-life, you know what’s going to win every time.
28 Comments | Abortion, Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Here We Go Again
July 14, 2010Updated Below
We’re back to the abortion and healthcare debate. True to form, the National Right to Life Committee is attacking a Pennsylvania high-risk insurance pool for supposedly subsidizing abortion. And of course Republican John Boehner leaped with lightning speed on the bandwagon.
But this is another major storm in a tiny teacup. The NRLC”s position is that federal subsidies for this high-risk pool (a paltry $160 million, mind you) will pay for abortion. Even though the guidelines say specifically that elective abortion cannot be covered, the NLRC says that the definition of elective abortion is so fluid under Pennsylvania law that pretty much anything barring sex selection can be covered. Except that this isn’t right.
46 Comments | Abortion, Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Why Inequality is Important
July 13, 2010I’ve talked about this before - the level of inequality in the United States today is at its highest level since just before the Great Depression. Since the 1980s, the rich got richer and the extreme rich got extremely richer. This chart was developed by Paul Krugman from an influential paper by Picketty and Saez – it measures the share of the richest 10 percent in national income:
Why is this such a problem? I can think of at least three reasons.
10 Comments | Catholic Social Teaching, Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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The Positive Role of the State
July 12, 2010Whenever I write posts like this one, I often find comments complaining about excess state power interfering in market-driven outcomes. Of course, Catholic social teaching has always acknowledged the role of the civil power in rectifying injustice (including economic injustice), and has done so in especially stark terms since Rerum Novarum.
Much of the criticism I see in comboxes and elsewhere derives from the standpoint of liberalism, whether explicitly or implicitly. Liberalism, of course, denies that the state has any duties toward God. Under liberalism, the individual is paramount and the state is a purely human creation designed to enforce a social contract between individuals and whose chief function is law and order. In the United States in particular, a philosophy that exalts individual freedom is closely entwined with the dominant Calvinist-Protestant tradition of seeing material success of a sign of virtue and divine favor. Of course, Protestantism and liberalism share common roots.
29 Comments | Catholic Social Teaching, Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Social Norms and Executive Pay
July 9, 2010Japanese CEOs do not earn that much. The chairman of Toyota makes $1.5 million, and the CEO makes less than $1.1 million a year. A new law requires the disclosure of executive pay more than $1.1 million. Only 300 people fell into this category.
Social norms matter. They used to matter in the US too, before the Reaganite restoration of laissez-faire liberalism. In his last book, Paul Krugman looks at the difference between GM in 1969 and Walmart today. Walmart’s non-supervisory employees receive about $18,000 a year, less than half (in real terms) of what GM workers earned in the earlier period. Walmart’s CEO was paid $23 million in 2005, five times more (in real terms) than GM’s CEO a quarter of a century earlier.
19 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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A Great Choice for San Francisco
July 8, 2010The new auxiliary bishop of San Francisco is Robert McElroy. Why is he a great choice? Because he has taken on (i) the distortion of just war teaching by George Weigel and Michael Novak; and (ii) the call for “eucharistic sanctions” on abortion-supporting politicians by a small-but-noisy wing of the American Catholic Church.
Here is the essay on the Iraq war. He argues strongly that the just war conditions did not – and still do not – apply. In addressing the Weigel-Novak distortion, he makes the following point: “The primary background against which the church has interpreted the just-war tradition for the past 50 years is not the limited destructiveness of medieval warfare, but the enormous destructive potential of contemporary warfare. Against this background, the leadership of the church has been unswerving in its presumption against war.” His take on proportionality is particularly interesting. He notes that the war party called for “epistemic modesty” when evaluating whether the evils unleashed by war would outweigh any good that might come of it. But later, that same war party put aside all modesty and asserted that the American occupation must continue.
You should also read his essay on eucharistic sanctions. He hits the nail on the head: “The use of eucharistic sanctions for political action will inevitably breed a reductionist outlook in defining the church’s social agenda….Yet the sanctions movement has already made clear that it advances a two-tier notion of political imperatives for Catholics, one that centers upon life issues and another for all other political and social questions. The life issues will be deemed essential to the fullness of Catholic faith and thus to participation in the Eucharist; all other issues–including war and issues of economic justice, over which the United States exercises unparalleled influence because of its political and economic power—will be relegated to secondary status.” Furthermore, “The imposition of eucharistic sanctions solely on candidates who support abortion legislation will inevitably transform the church in the United States, in the minds of many, into a partisan, Republican-oriented institution and thus sacrifice the role that the church has played almost alone in American society in advocating a moral agenda that transcends the political divide.”
We need more bishops like this. (Hat tip: Michael Sean Winters).
77 Comments | Abortion, Bishops, Catholic Social Teaching, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Big is Beautiful
July 7, 2010One of the most common fallacies on the right is the mis-use of the subsidiarity principle to support an ideological opposition to the role of government. Of course, it is true that oppressive state power can trample upon human dignity; the experience of the former Soviet Union comes to mind, and Pope John Paul warned that a welfare state (necessary though it is) can sometimes become overly-bureaucratic and far removed from the dignity of each person.
But the popes who developed Catholic social teaching were worried about something quite different – about overly-powerful business interests and corporations who deny workers fair wages and benefits, and who use their financial leverage to reward themselves and tilt public policy in an unjust direction. Pope Pius XI, who more than anyone laid out the intellectual underpinnings of subsidiarity, railed against “immense power and despotic economic dictatorship ..consolidated in the hands of a few” who use their muscle to ”gain supremacy over the State”. A correct social order, in the view of Pope Pius, would be one where the “riches that economic-social developments constantly increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons and classes that the common advantage of all” and where ”one class is forbidden to exclude the other from sharing in the benefits”.
20 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Wenski on Immigration
July 1, 2010From an interview with John Allen, Miami’s new archbishop had this to say:
“Immigration has always been a part of the history of this country, and more importantly it’s been a part of the history of the Catholic church in this country. I think some of the anti-immigrant feeling that we’re experiencing in this country is just a revival of the Know-Nothing movement of the past, which sometimes was a veiled anti-Catholicism. That makes me even more upset where I hear Catholics spouting anti-immigrant things, because they’ve forgotten their history, and it’s a history that’s maybe only one generation removed from where they are today.”
That might be because the noisiest Catholic voices against immigration are either converts or those who have “over-integrated” into the dominant Protestant culture.
34 Comments | Immigration, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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We Need a Bank Tax
June 30, 2010Think about the costs of the financial crisis. According to the International Labor Organization, 34 million people around the world have lost their jobs. According to the World Bank, 60 million people were pushed further into extreme poverty, living on less than $2 a day. And what caused it? Greed. Excessive risk-taking by a financial sector, secure that it could keep the upside and have the taxpayer pay all the downside. It was a lucrative one-way bet and it paid off.
11 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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The Right to Income Security
June 29, 2010In light of MZ’s post on the refusal to the Republicans to extend unemployment benefits to over a million of our brother and sisters who cannot find work, I thought I would recognize some core Catholic teaching in this area. Here is John Paul II in Laborem Exercens:
“The role of the agents included under the title of indirect employer [at the national and international level that are responsible for the whole orientation of labour policy] is to act against unemployment, which in all cases is an evil, and which, when it reaches a certain level, can become a real social disaster….obligation to provide unemployment benefits, that is to say, the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of the moral order in this sphere, namely the principle of the common use of goods or, to put it in another and still simpler way, the right to life and subsistence.”
And what about other social benefits, including health care?
“Besides wages, various social benefits intended to ensure the life and health of workers and their families play a part here. The expenses involved in health care, especially in the case of accidents at work, demand that medical assistance should be easily available for workers, and that as far as possible it should be cheap or even free of charge….A third sector concerns the right to a pension and to insurance for old age and in case of accidents at work.”
Just something to keep in mind.
30 Comments | Economics, Economy, Labor, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Taxpayer funding of abortion during the Bush years
June 18, 2010An interesting GAO analysis, flagged by David Gibson: during 2002-09, almost $1 billion dollars in federal funding went to organizations that perform or promote abortion. Where was the outrage back then?
54 Comments | Abortion, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Petering out on Health Care…
June 16, 2010Since I have little appetite for vitriolic American right-wing ideology disguised as Catholic teaching, I generally try to steer clear of Thomas Peters’ site. But every now and again, morbid curiosity gets the better of me. And so, here is the latest installment from young Master Peters – the unveiling of a “Catholic Vote” video that is suffused by “awesomeness”! Trust me, you will want to see this for yourself – no comment of mine can possibly do justice to this epic masterpiece…
14 Comments | Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion, Politics | Permalink
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Portrayal of Priests on TV and Film
June 15, 2010I write this post because I notice the same basic errors repeated over and over again on television and in the movies. One would think that a Catholic advisor would correct some basic problems, but they seem entrenched at this point. Here’s my list – maybe you can add to it:
- Priests are always walking around the Church, and especially like hanging out near votive candles. If you ever need to talk to a priest, just walk into a dark Church and you will find them hovering around – and willing to help. Clearly, they have no administrative duties whatsoever!
- Priests wear clerics. When it comes to saying Mass, they wear cassock and surplice, with maybe a stole thrown around their necks. They never ever wear chasubles!
- At Mass, they tend to preach a lot from the pulpit. That’s really all they do. If they have to stand behind the altar (which is rare!), they just move their hands around a little.
- They like to carry books with them, especially when they walk around the Church. This book is typically the bible, not a missal, and not the daily office. Similarly, you will find a bible being read at Mass, but never a lectionary or a sacramentary!
Did I miss anything?
13 Comments | Film, Humor, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Chuck Schumer Defends War Crimes
June 14, 2010In yet another example of how Israel is somehow exempt from the moral law, Senator Chuck Schumer proves once yet that he is possibly the most odious Democratic senator. In an address to some Jewish group, he made the following points about the blockade of Gaza:
“And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.”
As Glenn Greenwald notes, it is akin to treating 1.5 million suffering human beings as dogs in need of some stern training. Remember, collective punishment is absolutely forbidden under the moral law, and is also a war crime under the Geneva conventions. And this has always been what it is all about – Israeli documents note that the blockade is less about security and more about “economic warfare”. That the Obama administration refuses to stand against Israel, and that his right-wing opponents demand an even closer alliance with Israel, is appalling.
4 Comments | Israel, Middle East, Morning's Minion, War and Peace | Permalink
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More Violent “Pro-Lifers”
June 8, 2010
73 Comments | Abortion, Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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La Civilta Cattolica on American Healthcare Reform
June 7, 2010First came L’Osservatore Romano. Then came 30 Days. And now we a third journal with close ties to the Vatican – La Civilta Cattolica - refusing to toe the line on Obama. In this case, the journal praises Obama’s healthcare reform, even though the USCCB refused to endorse the final version. This is significant. As David Gibson notes, the Vatican Secretariat of State reviews every edition of the Jesuit journal. Or as Sandro Magister puts it, this is a magazine “published by a group of Jesuits in Rome which, by statute, reflects the views of the Vatican Secretary of State – and, by extension, of the Pope”.
14 Comments | Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Quote of the Day – On Catholic Blogs
June 7, 2010“As I talked with brother bishops in preparation for this presentation, there was consistent agreement that one aspect that is most alarming to us about media is when it becomes unchristian and hurtful to individuals.For example, we are particularly concerned about blogs that engage in attacks and hurtful, judgmental language. We are very troubled by blogs and other elements of media that assume the role of Magisterium and judge others in the Church. Such actions shatter the communion of the Church that we hold so precious.”
- Bishop Gabino Zavala, USCCB communications chair.
A lesson there for all of us. (Hat tip: Rocco).
23 Comments | Blogs, Catholic Blogging, Media, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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First Things Defends Consequentialism
June 4, 2010Consider this a follow-up to yesterday’s post, about how comfortable the American right is with violence. First Things is a magazine that seeks to “advance a religiously-informed public philosophy”. I suppose that religiously-informed public philosophy encompasses consequentialism. Someone tell the Catholic Church. Someone tell Pope John Paul II, who wrote a strong encyclical denouncing moral positions like consequentialism.
What is this about? The title says it all: “Israel’s Gaza Boycott Saves Lives“. The author, Shmully Hecht, claims that “The actions Israel has taken aimed solely to prevent attacks on its civilian population” and that “The blockade of Gaza represents an inconvenience ..but not a humanitarian crisis”.
8 Comments | Israel, Middle East, Morning's Minion, War and Peace, war | Permalink
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The Violence Inherent in the System…
June 3, 2010In my opinion, what runs through that hodge-podge of peculiar and inconsistent beliefs that characterizes American “conservatism” is a theology of violence. On one level, there is of course the derivative Calvinist dualism that divides the world into friend or enemy, loyalist or traitor, freedom-lover or terrorist, patriot or socialist. And the other, of course, to is be destroyed. On another level, there is a liberal social contractarian that restricts basic human rights to those within the perimeter of the social contract – and liberalism is the reigning philosophy of the American right. And on another level still, there is consequentialism – the notion that all acts should be evaluated solely on their consequences. Of course, this moral relativism embraces social contractarian as the consequences that matter are only the consequences to our preferred side, and violence against those excluded can be readily defended, even relished.
19 Comments | Israel, Morning's Minion, War and Peace, war | Permalink
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The Collective Punishment of Gaza
June 2, 2010It’s no secret that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is designed to collectively punish the 1.5 million people who live there. This blockade is now 2 years old, and causes immense suffering. Here is a quick summary from the Financial Times, Amnesty International, and the Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart.
The blockade disproportionately hits the most vulnerable, including children (half the Gazan population), the elderly, the sick, and refugees.
19 Comments | Israel, Morning's Minion, War and Peace, war | Permalink
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Israel and Palestinian Christians
June 1, 2010I would like to draw your attention to a fascinating and topical essay in the One magazine by Sami El-Yousef, a Christian from Jerusalem. (For those unfamiliar with this little gem of a magazine, One is published by the Catholic Near East Welfare Association). El-Yousef is a Christian (Greek Orthodox) of very ancient stock. He writes lovingly about the Holy Saturday liturgy at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As the highlight of the liturgical year, thousands of Christians gather from around the region and pack themselves into this ancient Church for the Holy Fire Celebration. Leading the procession are the 13 oldest Christian families in Jerusalem, and El-Yousef belongs to one of them. These families are given the distinct honor of processing three times around the tomb with their family banners. After the procession, the patriarch enters the tomb and re-emerges with the holy fire.
4 Comments | Israel, Middle East, Morning's Minion, Orthodoxy, Peace, War and Peace | Permalink
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Gomez on Immigration
May 28, 2010From Rocco, the new coadjutor of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, received extended applause for delivering the punchline that “”no one is an alien in the eyes of God.”
And here are his views in an extended interview:
22 Comments | Immigration, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Quote of the Day
May 25, 2010“One factor [behind the abuse crisis] was a poor understanding and communication of the Church’s teaching on sexuality, shown particularly in a rigorist attitude to the body and sexuality. This was mediated in part through the formative influence of Irish Catholicism in the life of the Church in Australia. We owe the Irish an immense debt of gratitude for what they have given us, but for complex historical reasons the Church in Ireland was prey to the rigorist influence that passed from the Continent to Ireland – often under the name of Jansenism – and found fertile soil there. It then passed into the Irish diaspora of which Australia was part. This rigorist influence led to an implicit denial of the Incarnation, which had people thinking they had to deny their humanity to find their way to the divinity. The irony of this is that the Incarnation stands at the very heart of the Catholic sense of a sacramental universe. Jansenism grew from Catholic soil, though it was tinged with Calvinism too. But there was nothing incarnational about Jansenism, and the Catholic Church rejected it, even if its influence has been hard to erase, with traces remaining still. Catholic teaching on sexuality offers deep insights and rich resources which we will need to explore in new ways as we seek to deal with the current crisis.”
– Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra and Goulburn.
Read the whole lying. Along with Diarmuid Martin, this prelate also seems to get it.
4 Comments | Abuse Scandal, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Looking Back with Bart Stupak
May 17, 2010Via Grant Gallicho, Bart Stupak looks back at his role in healthcare reform. In my book, Stupak is a hero – his dual commitment to the unborn and to universal healthcare was unwavering, and he fought an extremely tough fight to secure an expansive healthcare reform that kept its distance from abortion. It is because of him and his band of pro-life Democrats that we got healthcare reform, and we got reform that is more pro-life than anybody could have possibly imagined.
And yet, today he sounds like a broken man. On the left, he was derided for merely interjecting abortion into the debate. On the right, he was attacked as a traitor, a Judas, who had the gall of actually believing in healthcare reform. And in the current poisoned atmosphere on the right, Stupak now faces a constant flood of hate mail, harassment, and death threats.
10 Comments | Abortion, Health Care, Healthcare, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Again, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is a Leading Light of the Church
May 11, 2010From a speech last night:
“On a purely personal level, as Diarmuid Martin, I have never since becoming Archbishop of Dublin felt so disheartened and discouraged about the level of willingness to really begin what is going to be a painful path of renewal and of what is involved in that renewal….
Why am I discouraged? The most obvious reason is the drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled. There are still strong forces which would prefer that the truth did not emerge. The truth will make us free, even when that truth is uncomfortable. There are signs of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the Church of Jesus Christ in Ireland and how it was covered up….
Renewal of the Church requires participation and responsible participation. I have spoken about the need for accountability regarding the scandal of sexual abuse. I am struck by the level of disassociation by people from any sense of responsibility. While people rightly question the concept of collective responsibility, this does not mean that one is not responsible for one’s personal share in the decisions of the collective structures to which one was part.
I am surprised at the manner in which Church academics and Church publicists can today calmly act as pundits on the roots of the sexual abuse scandals in the Church as if they were totally extraneous to the scandal. Where did responsibility lie for a culture of seminary institutions which produced both those who abused and those who mismanaged the abuse? Where were the pundit-publicists while a Church culture failed to recognise what was happening? We need to take a radical new look at the formation of future priests….
The narrow culture of clericalism has to be eliminated. It did not come out of nowhere and so we have to address its roots in seminary training. “
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